In Manhattan Real Estate, Wealth and Power Are Relative

By MICHAEL GROSS

May 6, 2013

AT 10 p.m. Friday, my wife, my dog and I will be forced to evacuate our home because the boom of a construction crane atop a luxury condominium tower going up next door might possibly destroy our building. It won’t be the first time: Last October, we had to evacuate for six days after Hurricane Sandy left the boom dangling precariously over West 57th Street, a situation that drew headlines worldwide. But this time, we’re being forced out merely because the city government wants to save the developer of the tower money and time.

I’m not looking for sympathy. I live near Central Park in a landmark 1909 co-op, Alwyn Court, where apartments sell for as much as $2 million. And the developer of the tower has offered each household $1,500 to pay for hotel rooms for the 22 hours we’ll have to evacuate. But in the world of New York City real estate, money, power and influence are all relative. In the tower next door, known as One57, penthouses have reportedly been sold for upward of $90 million. To the people who’ve bought them, $1,500 is chump change. And to the people who run this city, they matter. My neighbors and I — as I hope this story will demonstrate — don’t.

As the storm surge from Hurricane Sandy struck the city on Oct. 29, fierce winds loosened the boom from the crane. Twisting hundreds of feet above Midtown Manhattan, it threatened several landmark buildings, including Carnegie Hall and Alwyn Court, the safety of residents, and high-pressure steam and gas lines. That evening, on 20 minutes’ notice, my wife and I found ourselves dragging a hastily packed suitcase and a sopping wet dog down Central Park South, walking toward the home of a friend who’d offered us shelter. Some of our neighbors, who range from demi-celebrities to a bedridden 95-year-old living in a rent-regulated apartment, weren’t so lucky. At least one ended up in a public shelter.

At first, no one thought about the cost — financial or emotional — of being torn from their home on a moment’s notice. We knew that many had it much, much worse. Some still do. We spent nearly a week as privileged refugees, first with our friend, then in a rented apartment. Our expenses mounted. We kept what receipts we could, hoping we’d be compensated.

Five days after we were allowed back home, we contacted Extell Development Company, which is building One57.

We were asked to submit a claim for reimbursement, which was promised “within two to three weeks.” Two months later, we were still waiting. And when a check for $1,397.81 finally arrived in late January — from Extell’s construction company, Lend Lease — it was for about a quarter of what we’d asked for, which included lost income, since I work from home.

“Not the phone bill from the rented apartment, not the supplies from Gracious Home, not the laundry, not the spoilage, not the loss of income or the ‘wasted utilities,’ ” a factotum at Lend Lease e-mailed us, elaborating the denial of our claim. Our only alternative was to sue. We gave in, and signed a release.

We thought our mini-ordeal was over.

But in March, our co-op board president was invited to a meeting to discuss another evacuation. Then the meeting was put off. We didn’t know what was going on until last week, when Extell told us that the New York City Buildings Department had decreed that a replacement boom would be hoisted up to the crane, necessitating another closure of West 57th Street and a 22-hour evacuation of three adjacent buildings, including ours.

Even as the real estate market recovers — and in New York, it merely slowed during the Great Recession, compared to so many other parts of America — construction tower cranes still climb up and down buildings.

So why isn’t Extell simply bringing its crane down, attaching its new boom, and taking it up again, instead of creating and declaring an emergency and doing it all in a day? No one has offered an official explanation, but time and money seem the likely suspects. The billionaires who have signed up for units next door presumably are eager to move in — or, in the case of those based overseas, at least move some furniture in.

Why did Extell ignore our co-op board’s questions and expressions of concern until last Thursday, when it finally agreed to meet with us? Why were our building’s representatives, and our neighbors, on one side of the table, and Extell, Lend Lease and representatives of the Buildings Department on the other, as if it was us against them? Why was the Buildings Department’s order to vacate not sent until 6:25 p.m. Friday, when it arrived in our board president’s office in-box?

Could it be that giving us merely a week’s notice would make it virtually impossible for us to protest with any effect?

The city’s behavior has been disgraceful. According to a zoning-lot development agreement for the One57 project, Extell was supposed to give us 10 days’ notice before filing any changes to its plans with the Buildings Department. Such notice hasn’t arrived, according to our board president.

When The New York Times published a story Sunday about our forthcoming evacuation, some friends told me we were lucky that Extell had offered each Alwyn household $1,500 in compensation for the coming inconvenience. After the article appeared, Extell, on Monday, dropped a demand that we again present receipts before we can get reimbursed for that $1,500.

When Alwyn Court opened in 1909, it was touted as one of the finest and most expensive buildings in Manhattan. Now, there’s a new kid on the block and it’s expensive for sure. I don’t know how fine it will be, but I do know that it, or the people behind it, are very influential.

“The DOB has rubber-stamped literally hundreds of after-hours variances for Extell/Lend Lease on the One57 project,” the president of a neighboring co-op wrote to ours on Sunday. “Extell filed some papers professing hardship and the DOB has no qualms about approving literally anything, as far as we can see.”

Moreover, while Extell has told us that it has obtained $100 million in insurance, we haven’t seen any proof of it, and besides, it’s not much comfort to my neighbors and me. Should anything happen to our building, an architecturally revered structure, this weekend, our loss will surely be greater than the merely material.

On an island apocryphally purchased for $24 nearly four centuries ago, the convergence of money and power is an old story. Again, I’m not asking for pity. But the handling of One57’s crane is a telling tale about the disparities between relative affluence and comfort (my family’s) and astronomical, Croesus-and-Midas levels of wealth (One57’s). Maybe, one day, people will look up at Extell’s glass tower the same way they now do Alwyn Court, but somehow I doubt it.

Extell has announced plans for another tower, 50 percent taller, half a block away, and assuming it’s allowed to build that one, too, it will shortly steal One57’s thunder. Big real estate rules this island, and it always will.

Michael Gross is a journalist and author of several books on real estate, including “740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building.” He is completing a book about 15 Central Park West.